If I Never Met You. Mhairi McFarlane

you say, the more you’ll incriminate yourself.

      Laurie suspected what he wouldn’t say, was: there came a point where feelings weren’t there to be resuscitated, they had died. That dance, at that wedding. That’s what she’d picked up on. Flatlining.

      ‘And I want you to be happy. You deserve more than someone who …’

      ‘OK. Spare me that stuff, Dan,’ Laurie said, briskly, wiping her eyes, squeezing her already folded arms tighter. ‘You’re like the climber who can’t carry their injured mate, so leaves them to die. Do what you need to do but don’t pretend it’s about anything other than your survival.’

      ‘Hah,’ Dan rubbed his face tiredly. ‘You’re so bloody clever, you are.’

      She wasn’t sure, in the tone of his voice, that it was a compliment. It even sounded like a hint at some other part of this. Laurie was too tired and raw to judge.

      ‘I don’t know who or what I’m meant to trust in,’ Laurie said, tremulous. ‘We spend our whole lives together and one day it’s – nah, not for me? What do I do with that? What’s the lesson I have to learn here?’

      ‘There isn’t a lesson for you, you haven’t done anything wrong.’

      She could feel it now, the grief and enormity of what had been abruptly taken from her. A future. The rest of their lives. A promise, broken. ‘Then how am I going to ever believe this won’t happen again?’

      ‘I don’t know what to say. It’s taken me … so long to work up the courage because …’

      ‘Woah, you’re now saying you weren’t happy for so long?’

      ‘No! Or not in a serious way. Just an underlying doubt. Fuck, Laurie. Working out how to do this without hurting you even more … it’s awful. It’s my mess and confusion but there was no way of it not ending up all over you.’

      He was sat up in bed, head hangdog, bare chested, and Laurie couldn’t help but wonder who the next person to see him like this would be, who he was going to find that he wanted more with. Who didn’t make life feel like a tunnel.

      ‘OK. There’s nothing left to say. It’s happening because it’s happening. Thanks for everything, I guess?’

      ‘Laurie …’

      ‘I mean it. Thank you. The fact you’re going doesn’t mean everything before it didn’t matter. Not wanting to be with someone anymore, and admitting it, isn’t doing anything wrong.’

      Dan looked taken aback and Laurie surprised herself with this Christian forgiveness that she hadn’t known she was going to dispense, until this moment. It felt unexpectedly powerful. Was it a ploy? She wasn’t sure. She didn’t feel the same way, one moment to the next. Maybe, once again, it was the advocate in her. She only had this left, to make him change his mind. Remember the woman you fell in love with. Well, the girl.

      Laurie hesitated, because she didn’t want to issue ultimatums or bluffs, they were pointless. But she still had to say it.

      ‘One thing, though, Dan. If you think you can do this, and spend three months living in some flat in Ancoats being lonely, with your “man cave” sofa from Gumtree and your Sky Sports package, and then come back to me saying it was some massive midlife crisis … you know you can’t, right? This damage you’re doing, it’s permanent. If you go, that’s it.’

      Dan nodded. ‘Yes. I wouldn’t presume to think I could ever ask that of you.’

      Laurie left the room, knowing that she’d lied, and he probably did too.

       6

       Dad

       Hello princess. How’s my beautiful clever daughter? Well guess what, me & Nic tied the knot!!! Just because of tax reasons, Visas, all that jazz. Did it out here in Beefa with a couple of witnesses but we’re going to have a proper tear-up in Manchester in a month or so, I’ll give you the details when I have them. Going to spend a few quid on it, need somewhere fancy, no fleapits. Get yourself a nice dress and send me the bill, you’re one of the bridesmaids, as it were. Love you loads my darling. Austin xxx

      Laurie blinked at the WhatsApp through the fug of receding sleep on Sunday morning: you could dissect this in a lab as a perfect study of her relationship with her father. All of him was in there, like a nucleus containing the DNA information.

      1. Lavish praise, blandishments.

      2. Surprise news, the sort that makes it clear his life is, in fact, nothing much to do with her.

      3. Material spoiling, bribes.

      4. More protestations of how important she is to him. A bridesmaid ‘as it were’. I want you to feel you’re important without going to the trouble of actually treating you that way.

      5. Not, despite the performative paternalism, referring to himself ‘Dad’. On the rare occasions she’d seen him when she was little, she’d loved the novelty of having someone to call Dad, but he always used to correct her: ‘You’re making me sound old.’ She was baffled: thirty was old, and he was her dad?

      And not forgetting 6. The worst possible timing, as always.

       Laurie

       Hi, congratulations to you and Nic! Will come to the celebration, just let me know. I have less fun news, Dan and I have separated. I’m keeping the house on and he’s moving out. His decision, no third parties involved. Ah well. Maybe I’ll meet someone at your tear-up.

xx

      Two blue ticks, immediately. So he’d read it. No reply. More Classic Austin Watkinson.

      And to round it all off – and this part she couldn’t blame her dad for, although it felt as if she should be able to – he’d now unwittingly made her phone call to her mum, breaking the news about her and Dan, even more onerous. Her parents didn’t speak, so it was down to Laurie if she was going to be informed, and she should be, really. Laurie knew if she put it off, she’d end up avoiding it altogether; she wouldn’t keep secrets for her dad. Still, her mum wouldn’t thank her for it, and it’d feel like it was Laurie’s fault.

      Laurie and Dan had spent all day Saturday slowly and painfully going through it all again, and now Dan was out on a run and Laurie was actually relieved not to have to face him for a few hours, endlessly wondering if she could have said or done something different to change this outcome.

      Having told one person, it had started to become real. She could call her mum and practise doing it vocally – and now, in a Dan-less house, was better than later. She sat on the third step of the stairs, heaving the plastic rotary red and blue phone onto her lap. When she bought it a year ago from a website that did ‘vintage things with a modern twist’, Dan had said, ‘More bourgeoise knick-knacks. Behold our thirty-something pile of affluent middle-class tat!’

      Did he hate all this stuff? In this home they’d made? Could she not even look at a sodding retro hipster landline in the same way? His belongings were piled into tragic bin bags in the dining room. She’d heard him, before she got up, quietly calling a local restaurant to cancel their reservation. This afternoon, they had been meant to be eating Sunday lunch at a pretentious new place nearby full of squirrel cage light bulbs and ‘Nordic-inspired small plates’.

      ‘Look at this,’ Dan had said barely a week ago, in another space-time dimension, waving his phone with the website open. ‘This place isn’t a restaurant, it’s a dining space prioritising a thoughtful eating menu with an emphasis on provenance and a curated repertoire of low intervention wines. Fucks saaake.’

      ‘You